Windows XP

First press the button “Start” in the lower left corner of the desktop

Next in the menu “Start” on the right side, click “Run”

Enter the command in the window that appears “gpedit.msc”

The Local Computer Group Policy Editor will appear.

Go to the section “Computer Configuration” next “Administrative Templates”

select a section “System”

In “System” select “Windows Time Service”

The next step is to go to the section “Time Providers”

Select the settings under the name “Enable Windows NTP Client”

In the window that appears, select an item “Enabled”

Then press the button “ОК”

Let’s go to the setting “Configure Windows NTP Client”

A settings window will open

Switch to the mode “Enabled”

In field “NtpServer” specify the IP address of the NTP server or its DNS name, for example “pool2.ntp.od.ua”, through which we specify a special flag, in this case “0x9”

In field “Type” indicate that we will use the protocol “NTP”

In field “SpecialPollInterval” specify “900” seconds, this is the interval between requests to the server

Press “ОК”

close the window “Group Policy”

Now it is necessary to restart the time service, for this, press the button “Start”

Select “Run”

Enter the command “services.msc”

A window with a list of services will appear

We find the service called “Windows Time”

We notice this service, click on it with the right mouse button, select the item “Restart”

Next, we need to make sure that our service has restarted and started synchronizing the time

To do this, select the menu “Start”

Select “Run”

Enter the command “eventvwr.msc” and press “ОК”

A window with the event log will open, select the log “System”

We find a message with a source “W32Time”

We open the event and read it, there should be a message about successful time synchronization with an external time source

You can also see how well our clock is synchronized compared to the standard

To do this, press the menu again “Start”

Select “Run”

Enter the command “cmd“ then press “ОК”

The command line will start “cmd.exe”

Enter long command “w32tm /stripchart /computer:pool2.ntp.od.ua /samples:3”

Where “w32tm” time service management tool, “stripchart” show clock deviation graph, “computer:pool2.ntp.od.ua” remote server (time source), and “samples:3” which means to display the graph only three times

An example of command execution

In this graph you can see that at 9:34:04 the first of three test connections to an external NTP server was made, the result showed a response delay of +00.0000971 seconds and a time difference of -00.0041410 seconds.

The setup is complete, testing has shown acceptable results and confirmed the functionality of the time synchronization service in Windows XP.